Picked up a Van Wert Stoker

I will have to count some sprocket teeth. The small ones I have are all 10 teeth. I haven't counted the large ones yet.

-Don

I have 3 sprockets. two of them have 21 teeth (VA400's). the one that came with the VA600 has 18 teeth. I can change the feed rate that way if I need to.

-Don

I was up in coal country yesterday to drop off the VA-600 boiler at Scrapper's shop. He is going to weld in a flange for the DHW coil.

Just up the road about 5 miles there was a Van Wert VA-800 stoker for sale. There was some interesting stuff with it so it came home with me. This one has the "Ash Slicer" on it. Neat, I never saw one in person before. I got some parts with it to. The boiler was set up for steam and it rusted out so the owner scrapped it. He did save the doors, frames, sheetmetal as well as the stoker. I also got a spare rebuilt gearbox, ash slicer, broken ash ring, ash diverter and 6 ash pans. It came with an auger to, it's not a Van Wert though. I was really happy to see that the ash diverter was saved. That will go right in the BairMatic/Van Wert.

I took a video of it running. I will post it later.

-Don

Don,
do you think the ash slicer was necessary. or was some engineer just overthinking the thing?

waldo lemieux wrote:Don,
do you think the ash slicer was necessary. or was some engineer just overthinking the thing?

I don't know. I have only read about it and Scott has a video of a VA-400 running the ash slicer. I have read that it was not necessary and the VA-400 i'm running has not needed it.

-Don

With certain types of coal the ash slicer may help keep clinkers cleared.

In a Van Wert 400, the clearances in the firebox are pretty tight. The idea of the slicer was to keep the ash from building up between the combustion wall and the fire pot. His most expertness, Arnie, says that he actually found that the slicer held the ash inside it more than a regularly equipped pot. When I ran mine it did. The ashes would make a dam at the two sides where the pivot point was because there wasn't any slicing going on.

Scottscoaled wrote:The ashes would make a dam at the two sides where the pivot point was because there wasn't any slicing going on.

Same thing was happening today running this VA-800. It seemed to do a better job of blocking the ash rather than slicing it in certain spots.

-Don

Are you going to put the VA600 in your house?

Rob R. wrote:Are you going to put the VA600 in your house?

That was kind of my original plan. The BairMatic/Van Wert has really not given me a good reason to swap it out though. We will find out this winter.

-Don

StokerDon wrote:

Scottscoaled wrote:The ashes would make a dam at the two sides where the pivot point was because there wasn't any slicing going on.

Same thing was happening today running this VA-800. It seemed to do a better job of blocking the ash rather than slicing it in certain spots.

-Don

It kinda looked like overzealous engineering to me, but I only have limited EFM experience .

Rob R. wrote:Are you going to put the VA600 in your house?

Don , the way you switch boilers, I hope you've invested in a lot of quick connect fittings

That's funny Waldo! Hahahaha. Truer words were never spoken.

Hummm,,, If this keeps up I might not need any radiators. I'll just put all the boilers in my house and fire'em up!!!

-Don

StokerDon wrote:Hummm,,, If this keeps up I might not need any radiators. I'll just put all the boilers in my house and fire'em up!!!

-Don

Only fire one boiler at a time, and use the other boilers as radiators.

I finally got around to uploading the video!



-Don